New York’s Daily News is reporting the gut-wrenchingly sad story of a pregnant Brooklyn mother who died amid a hail of bullets on Friday afternoon as she tried to protect schoolchildren at Public School 298 in the borough’s Brownsville section from a gunman perched atop a nearby roof.

Zurana Horton, the 33-year-old pregnant woman, was hit in the head in front of the Lucky Supermarket at Pitkin Ave. and Watkins St. after she threw herself over a group of children, cops and witnesses said.

“Moments before, she was seen hovering over several children to protect them,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

The second woman was shot in the arm and chest. The 31-year-old was listed in stable condition at Brookdale University Hospital. The 11-year-old girl, identified as Cheanne McKnight, a 6th-grader at P.S. 298, was being treated at Brookdale for a graze wound to the cheek.

A source said Horton, a mother of 13, had just picked up one of her kids from nearby P.S. 298. A teacher ran to her side and whisked at least one of her children into a nearby firehouse for safety.

22 Responses

I can’t help but feel that the commentary at The Root — saying that if this happened in tony Manhattan instead of one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York — this would be an outrage all over the headlines.

I have to agree with Florence re: The Root’s analysis, particularly since the first place I heard about this horrific incident was here and not one of the major media outlets I peruse. Workplace shootings get top coverage, school shootings in smaller communities get top coverage. Some asshole peppers kids and women with bullets in a poor part of a big city? Oh well, their fault for living there.

I would like to again express my desire to renounce my association with the species homo sapiens. Is tursiops truncatus accepting terrestrial members?

It is all over the headlines in New York. It dominated front pages of the New York Post and the New York Daily News and it made the front page of the New York Times online (I don’t know where it ran in the print edition).

Of course, if this had happened to a white woman in Manhattan there would be saturation coverage nationwide. So, point taken.

Wow. I heard about the shooting on Yahoo and that a mother had covered the children, but none of the details. Mother of 13? Mother of whichever little kids she protected with her life, too, in my book. I’m glad none of the kids were killed but that’s tragic that woman had to make such a sacrifice (not to mention how her own family must feel, though I’m sure they’re not surprised to know what she did.)

A PREGNANT 33 year-old mother of THIRTEEN??? What is wrong with these people?? Is this the Middle Ages Spanish countryside??

If she had been any smarter she would have managed to avoid a situation in which she would be gunned down by a stranger like that. But then again, if she had that intellectual capability, she wouldn’t have had THIRTEEN kids (and ONE MORE on the way) by 33, now would she? She surely couldn’t take care of her kids like that, what kind of a mother is that who doesn’t bother to think if she would be able to correctly provide for her kids?

We know what happens then: She was shot by an 18 year old gang member.. Well, those kids that you pop out without bothering to think if you will be able to provide for them grow up to be, well, gangsters who shoot at one another killing passers-by.. Karma IS a b*tch..

Just fyi, bottlenose dolphins murder and rape each other, although possibly not as much as humans because they don’t have guns. Also, they don’t have social movements dedicated to improving this state of affairs: dolphins. So good luck with your species change. Also dolphins have been reported to rape people.

auditorydamage:
I have to agree with Florence re: The Root’s analysis, particularly since the first place I heard about this horrific incident was here and not one of the major media outlets I peruse. Workplace shootings get top coverage, school shootings in smaller communities get top coverage. Some asshole peppers kids and women with bullets in a poor part of a big city? Oh well, their fault for living there.

I would like to again express my desire to renounce my association with the species homo sapiens. Is tursiops truncatus accepting terrestrial members??

The one thing that I always wish though, in the tragic shooting incidents, is that they wouldn’t just identify the women by their family relationships, but also the men. I never read how a male victim is the father of these many children, or a grandfather, but the focus is always on how it is so much worse that a mother dies, or a grandmother, as opposed to simply a woman.